THE WORKPLACE ATTACHMENT STYLES QUESTIONNAIRE IN SHORTENED 9-ITEM VERSION

Abstract

"Introduction: Place attachment is multi-dimensional and depends on a reciprocal relationship between behavior and experience. It comes from environmental psychology, and it has its roots in the theory of attachment because of an emotional link between an individual and a place. The present paper aims to describe the psychometric characteristics of the Slovak version of The Workplace Attachment Styles Questionnaire (Srima, 2018). Methods: The original questionnaire consists of 15 items with a Likert scale ranging from totally disagree to agree. The research sample consisted of 645 working adults of a convenience sample, aged from 16 to 78 years, consisting of 54.9% women, from various work fields (finance, sales, education). We randomly divided the sample into two halves for separate studies. Results: In the first study with 323 adult participants, we used exploratory factor analysis to examine its construct validity. According to exploratory factor analysis, we reduced the 15-item questionnaire to a 9-item structure with three original factors: secure (AM = 6.23, SD = 2.32), dismissive (AM = 3.64, SD = 2.54), and preoccupied (AM = 3.64, SD = 2.31) workplace attachment styles, with an average internal consistency of 0.75. In the second study with 322 participants, we executed the confirmatory factor analysis, which confirmed the three-factor structure, with an average internal consistency of 0.65. Discussion: The results confirmed the original three-factor structure of The Workplace Attachment Styles Questionnaire with 9 original items instead of 15. This paper contributes to the shorter version of the Workplace Attachment Styles questionnaire adapted to the Slovak population. The study's limitations are the absence of other measurement tools that could verify the construct of workplace attachment itself (Adult Attachment in the Workplace, Experience in Close Relationship Questionnaire). That is also what is worth doing in the next research."